Jeffrey Bloomer: Looking for a place to eat in the State Street area is depressing. The area is littered with God-forsaken chains: Buffalo Wild Wings, Cosi, Jimmy John’s. Lame. Pseudo-chains like Amer’s are no less of a disappointment. So finding Silvio’s here was a pleasant surprise, like slogging through a pointless movie that’s redeemed by a Peter Sarsgaard performance.
- Mike Hulsebus
- (STEVEN TAI/Daily)
Donn M. Fresard: I had no idea this place existed – it’s in the same building as Sushi.come, a pretty dismal sushi joint, and I held that against it – until my housemate played an acoustic set here a couple weeks ago. They gave us a free eggplant pizza, which was a lot more satisfying than you’d think. Silvio’s is run by an Italian guy who spent 25 years making pizza in his father’s bakery in the Abruzzi region, so their pizza is probably the most authentic in town. Plus, they use a lot of unusual ingredients, and most of them are organic, if you’re into that sort of thing.
Kimberly Chou: OK. Guys. Can I just say something? This place has a pizza with fennel on it.
DMF: Yeah. Kimmy, you’re an organic snob. How many times do I have to tell you that organic eggs and bananas taste the same as the regular kind?
KC: Donny, don’t be a dick.
JB: (Interrupts.) Anyway. We were going to order the “fantasy pizza” – asparagus, artichoke, ham and two kinds of cheeses – but I don’t eat meat, so we asked Silvio if we could substitute something for ham. He sort of stood there and thought about it for a while, and I thought he was mulling over the logistics, but it turned out he was trying to figure out which ingredients would best complement the rest of the pizza. That was cool.
DMF: Yeah, I thought so. My impression of Silvio was that he took a lot of pride in his pizzas and really wanted us to enjoy them. And we did. The truffle oil pizza with shiitake mushrooms was one of the best I’ve had. The crust, in particular, really stood out – light, crispy and flavorful.
JB: I liked how clean the pizza was. Not greasy at all. And the menu is the best I’ve seen. There are a lot of really creative combinations that I want to try. Also, Silvio brought us free pastries after we finished our pizza, which was amazing.
KC: You know this place is open until 3 a.m. on weekends, right? So why doesn’t it get mobbed by drunks after the bars close and the house parties get rolled, as in Big Ten, NYPD and Bell’s? It’s even on the way back to the Hill dorms.
DMF: My guess is that nobody knows it’s open late, and Markley kids aren’t big on organic. Still, it’s been here less than a year. I think it’ll eventually work its way into the undergraduate zeitgeist. It certainly deserves to.
JB: So. Complaints?
KC: The d